Emotion and perception in aristotle's rhetoric

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 80, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 86-100

  Nieuwenburg, Paul ^a  

^a LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

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EID: 4043152152     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/715690816     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. On one (general) account, intentionality 'covers those characteristics of mental activities on account of which those activities are said both to have a content that contains information about something beyond the content and the activity, and to involve a particular sort of attitude towards that content. Moreover, it is a peculiarity of mental content that it is necessarily "perspectival".' William Lyons, Approaches to Intentionality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 1. Of course, it is not only mental activities which have this property. In a discussion of emotions, or affections, it is more accurate to ascribe it to mental states
2. See, for instance, William Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion (London: Duckworth, 1975), ch. 1; Dorothea Frede, 'Mixed Feelings in Aristotle's Rhetoric' in A. O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 260
3. Gisela Striker, 'Emotions in Context: Aristotle's Treatment of the Passions in the Rhetoric and His Moral Psychology' in Rorty, Essays, p. 287; John Cooper, 'An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions' in Rorty, Essays, p. 241
4. Admittedly, the collocation of hós epi to polu and kath' hauta is puzzling (but see Rh 1370a3-4). It could mean that either (1) all emotion-types have instances which do not involve pleasure or pain, or (2) not all, but only some emotion-types involve pleasure or pain. For reasons to become clear shortly, (2) appears the right alternative. For this discussion, see Stephen Leighton, 'Eudemian Ethics 1220bll-3', Classical Quarterly 34 (1984), pp. 135-8; Michael Woods, Eudemian Ethics, books I and II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 101
5. Jonathan Barnes, 'Aristotle and the methods of ethics', Revue Internationale de la Philosophie 34 (1981), p. 491 n. 1. This way of dissecting the verb is a refinement of the rule of thumb that phainesthai plus participle is veridical, whereas phainesthai with infinitive is non-veridical
6. It has been argued that Aristotle cannot be describing a 'rhetorical' criterion for belief in the sense that the fixation of belief requires persuasion by others-Jean-Louis Labarriere, 'Imagination humaine et imagination animale chez Aristote', Phronesis 29 (1984), pp. 17-49; this, however, would imply that beliefs resulting from rational self-persuasion would reduce to appearances; cf. Michael Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) pp. 146-7; Richard Sorabji,'Aristotle on Intentionality and Physiological Processes' in M. C. Nussbaum & A. O. Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle's De anima (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) p. 200, and Animal Minds and Human Morals pp. 36-7
7. John Cooper, 'An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions', p. 247; Gisela Striker, 'Emotions in Context', p. 291. In one version (directed against the Stoic theory of assent), the argument seems to go back to at least the Ethics commentary of Aspasius: see Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, p. 57
8. Stephen Leighton, 'Aristotle and the Emotions', p. 209
9. Or temper (thumos). Aristotle's usual preference for thumos in motivational contexts makes place for promiscuity in the Rhetoric: 1369a4; 7; 11; bl 1-5; 1370b9-ll; 1373b36-7; 1378bl-10. See William Grimaldi, Aristotle, 'Rhetoric', vol. 1, p. 232. John Cooper, 'An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions', pp. 249-50, holds that orgê is a particularly agitated form of'thumos. Such a distinction, however, is not pressed on one: in several contexts it is hard to see how anger could ever surpass temper in vehemence (EN 1116b23-9; EE 1229a24-5; cf. EN 1147al5-7). Moreover, none of the catalogues of the affections contains both temper and anger: DA 403a3-7; 16-8; 408bl-3; EN 1105b21-3; 1106al8-9; MM 1186al2-3; EE 1220bl2-t; 1378al9-21; Poet 1456a38-bl. See also Sarah Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 106, who calls anger 'the most obvious example' of thumos
10. I take the first kai of line b34 epexegetically: kinêsis tis is specified as katastasin hi. Of course, there is much perplexity surrounding this definition, since it appears to contradict he theory of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics (1174al9). For a fuller discussion of this matter, see J. C. B. Gosling & C. C. W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Dorothea Frede. The term atkroos, when applied to alteration (allôiosis), should be seen in connection with this, since a gradual change escapes notice (lanthanein) (Pit 253b23-6)
11. Martha Nussbaum, 'Aristotle on Emotions and Rational Persuasion' in Rorty, Essays, p. 321 n. 16, claims that' [t]he distinction between phantasia and doxa seems to be introduced in one passage in Book 1 (1370a28) but is altogether absent from Book 2. In general, the account shows no awareness of the more technical psychological distinctions of the De Anima.'
12. In current translations of this particular passage pathos is overdetermined. A pathos need not be a mental event, let alone an emotion-it may equally mean something like 'event', or 'what happens'. Cf. Ph 247al2. 1 have argued against such overdetermination in EN 1145b2-7, in [. ..]. Feeling pleasure occurs in perceiving some event, and the phantasiai involved in memory and anticipation are nothing but etiolated representations of an event. This is why the mourner, when remembering the deceased, 'a certain way sees' (horan pôs) not only the bewailed, but also the things she or he did (Rh 1370b26-8). If the events of a tragedy can be called pathe(inata), why not the events in the tragedy of life (cf. Poet 1449b27-8)? See Alexander Nehamas, 'Pity and Fear in the Rhetoric and the Poetics' in A. O. Rorty, Essays on Aristotle's Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 306-7
13. In contexts where he treats of its causal history Aristotle appears to distinguish phantasia from perception (aisthêsis): phantasia there has the restrictive sense of 'quasi-perceptual activity' (such as dreaming) (DA 428b 10-7; 429al-2; cf. Rh 1378b8-10). In others, where the causal role of phantasia itself is at stake, notably those concerned with the explanation of action, phantasia has a more general sense; in such contexts perceptions are treated as a subclass of'phantasia. On these matters, see the lucid account of Stephen Everson, Aristotle on Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 178-86. It should be noted that both senses sometimes alternate in one and the same context. Even in the most 'technical' discussion of phantasia in De anima 3.3 these senses intermingle, for Aristotle has barely distinguished phantasia from perception (DA 428a5-16) when he goes on to employ phainestai in its general sense in the sun example, which is an argument against its identification with belief (DA 428al8-b9)
14. Donald Davidson, 'How is Weakness of the Will Possible' in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 21-42. Davidson has criticized Aristotle's picture of akrasia as 'a battle between reason and passion' in which 'passion' is nonrational. Whatever its philosophical merits, Davidson is right as to the fact that it is Aristotle's picture
15. Myles Bumyeat, 'Aristotle on Learning to Be Good', p. 78
16. As a matter of historical fact, however, these chapters have in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance been treated as useful clarificatory appendices to Aristotle's ethical and political writings. Paul Oskar Kristeller, 'Philosophy and Rhetoric from Antiquity to the Renaissance' in Michael Mooney (ed.). Renaissance Thought and its Sources (New York: Columbia Univerity Press, 1979), pp. 239-40